


Sarkophágos Philos

by Palpalou



Series: Cold And Soft As Satin [5]
Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Deviates From Canon, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palpalou/pseuds/Palpalou
Summary: After the end, and from the start.
Relationships: Julius Caesar/Servilia of the Junii, Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Series: Cold And Soft As Satin [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519721
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Sarkophágos Philos

**Author's Note:**

> antony: unconditionnal love  
> brutus: shrieks what is that

When he was eleven years old, his mother took Marcus on a secret visit to Caesar’s house. It was so rare for her to let slip her cool and dignified manner he could count the times on the finger of one hand – even now. But that day, she had pulled him playfully along by the hand, bending slightly in order to imitate the creeping of a thief or conspirator as they walked along the familiar hallways of what was to him like a second home.

In an unassuming room, she had shown him an image of himself in stone. When it had become obvious he didn’t know what to say or think, she had put a gentle hand on his shoulder and explained.

“Don’t you like it, Marcellus?”

“I do like it, mother. Is it me?”

“It’s a bust of you. It’s a very special gift.”

Marcus nodded.

“It’s a gift a father would give his son. Don’t you think?”

He thought for a moment. His mother’s eyes were twinkling, and a bubble of giddy warmth rose and grew in his own chest.

“Is Caesar going to be my father now?”

She put a finger against her lips.

“It’s a secret for now. But this is the gift of someone who wants you. Who wants us.”

For the next few months, Marcus lived with a light under his breast, waiting for the surprise which he knew was going to come. Then one day, while they were visiting Marcus’ uncle, he received an invitation to a betrothing ceremony which had his mother and her brother sequestering themselves in a room to talk. When they came out, his uncle was visibly fuming and his mother was pale and tight-lipped. They went back home within the hour.

That evening, Marcus couldn’t sleep. He went to his mother’s rooms, guiding himself in the darkness with a hand on the walls until he could see light streaming out from her door. He could hear the gentle whispering of his mother talking with her body slave.

“Mother?” he called.

He was let in. She was still dressed, although her hair was down, and looking infinitely patient. He felt very young and would have liked to hold her hand.

I don’t understand, he wanted to say. I thought he wanted us. But there was something fragile in his mother’s face which scared him, and he stayed mute. After a moment, his mother passed a hand on her brow.

“We’ve all had a long day, Marcus”, she said. “Eleni will give you a cup of water and put you back to bed.”

Eleni bowed. She walked him back to his room along the dark hallways, the only sound the sussurant sound her bare feet made on the floor. She had brought no light with her, but she didn’t need to follow the walls, walking in the night with as much poise as she did in the light of day.

Marcus and his mother never talked about this day again and the memory was eroded by the following years to the vaguest shape of itself; but the conclusion he came to as he lay in his bed that night stayed with him all his life, whether he realised it or not.

His mother was gentle and calm, she smelled of flowers always and poets called her beautiful. Many people visited her, noble men and women as well as beggars to whom she gave charity. She could never be unwanted. The unavoidable inference was that, despite the blood and history flowing through his veins, something in him didn’t quite measure up; that he was the unworthy one.

*

What attracted him to Antony first was the shape of his shoulders. They were wide, obviously solid with virile strength even wrapped in a gaudy tunic. Above the collar, the light of the torches shone off his bare nape, his hair slightly shorter than was the trend for young Patricians at the time, soldier-style.

It would have gone no further for him, but a common friend had introduced them, later in the evening. There had been a burning overfamiliarity in his gaze which had surprised and flattered Brutus. That night, he had been the one to make the first move.

Later, he would come to the conclusion that the fire in his eyes had had more to do with his own nature than anything the object of his attention could inspire in his fickle spirit. Still, he would be drawn back to it again and again, even as he kept a tally of all there was to dislike in Mark Antony.

His brazenness, the way he would pet and kiss Brutus when he wanted to get his way as if he were a girl to be wooed into complacency, his crass sense of humour, his lack of decorum. They were small things, all in all. And yet, he flung them at Antony like so many daggers when they fought after he discovered the bust. Recognising his own features, ever so slightly distorted by the artist’s interpretation, had been like stumbling over a stone half-buried under the sand. Confounding anger had seized him immediately, and bafflement at the strength of his upset had only compounded it. When he had left Antony’s house, he had had no intention to ever see his face again. He hadn’t changed his mind in the weeks that followed. There had been letters to write, poetry to read, and his mother’s plans for senatorship besides. Barely time to even think about Mark Antony – not that he had.

Then Caesar had come for diner.

Visits from him were not out of the ordinary, especially informal ones. Because it was warm, the slaves had moved couches and a table from the triclinium to the peristyle so they could enjoy the night-time breeze as they ate – the kind of delightful eccentricity his mother only permitted when he visited. Brutus watched the both of them. Although they were far from expansive, even in private, they had a way of bending towards each other which told more than a thousand embraces could have. Between two courses, conversation turned to Caesar’s plans for a new campaign away from Rome. His mother seemed to have already known, from her lack of reaction. But Brutus suddenly had trouble swallowing. He knew, as everyone must that had lived through a civil war, however young at the time, that departures did not necessary lead to reunions.

That was when the name he was avoiding thinking about came up. He knew, intellectually, that Antony fought under Caesar’s command. Still, he felt as if he were in breach of some tacit pact. Certainly Caesar did not know that they were – acquainted. He tried to concentrate on plucking apart a bunch of grapes.

“Although we will have to see whether he is able to leave Rome. There’s an illness in the family at present.”

Grapes scattered everywhere.

“Oh, Brutus.”

He couldn’t imagine Antony being sick. He had brothers; maybe it was one of them who had fallen ill. But it did not look like Caesar was going to volunteer any more information. Already, his mother and he had gone on to talk about the year’s vintage.

He would visit Antony, he decided. It wasn’t a show of weakness. In fact, it showed good breeding to take the first step. In any case, he would extend the olive branch. If Antony apologised about the bust, he would set aside his asinine joke. He could see how it would go. Antony would have forgotten about their dispute and would laugh at his own stupid wit, then placate him with kisses and sex. And then things would go back to how they were before; pleasant, un-cumbersome encounters, until Antony left Rome again.

Across the table, his mother’s hand brushed Caesar’s bared forearm. He watched them without bitterness, although not quite without envy. In Rome, where politics reached everywhere, there was something bizarre about their easy affection. Certainly love was a thing that had no place in Brutus’ life.

*

The villa was large but rather plain. No family trees on those walls, no precious vases or spoils. There were a few masterfully carved pieces of furniture in the bigger rooms, but even they were made of plain wood rather than the richer materials which would have been used even in Brutus’ most private country houses.

It was where Antony had spent his childhood.

He had only vague memories of how he had come to be here.

The last thing he recalled clearly was looking at the advancing army, Cassius already growing cooler in his arms, and deciding this was his fate lined up before him in tidy rows of glinting metal under the Grecian sun.

Then, he remembered the taste of dust and sweat in his mouth, so vivid he could still taste it if he let himself. All-consuming pain radiating from his face, from the shield’s blow which had thrown him down, from between his shoulders, from his thigh, which he couldn’t keep from grasping at, stunned by the torn flesh he could feel beneath his fingers, and blood flowing out like warm water. The sound of a horn from somewhere far behind him, followed by a lot of noise and agitation around him. His last stand had lasted less than five minutes.

Despite the tearing pain in his back, he had tried to curl into a ball as best as he could to protect himself from trampling feet. At some point, a man had fallen on top of him in the throes of agony. He had felt his breath against his neck, hot, stinking and heavy, for several seconds, until it had stopped on a long, rattling exhale.

What followed were flashes more than memories. Brief moments of clarity, feeling weaker and colder each time, unable to get free from under a pile of corpses. Trying to say a prayer to the Manes, but realising he had lost his voice. Then, the full moon wobbling overhead. The taste of wine on his parched tongue. Shades moving around him, fragments of words he could not understand.

It had taken some time for his understanding to come back to him. Although he could feel his body being fed, being washed and sawn up, bandaged, lanced and moved around like a doll's, he could not make sense of anything else. Sometimes he saw Antony’s face, mocking. Once, discovering Caesar sitting by his bedside had had him wailing like a scared child.

Then one day, he had woken up in a dark, cool room. A girl in slave clothes had been pressing a soaked cloth against his mouth to make him drink. From his bed, he could see the blue of a summer sky through an open window. His eyebrow itched terribly. When he raised a hand to scratch himself, he discovered, all at once, that even that simple gesture took a tremendous effort, that he bore a long indented scar across his nose and cheek, and that his ring finger now ended in an angry red knot of a scar under the first knuckle.

He had spent the next few weeks relearning to walk, starting with his room and progressively exploring more and more of the house. 

There were only servants and slaves on the estate. He was able to go wherever he wanted within it, and for walks outside as well, although someone would be following after him. He was led away without violence the one time he tried to walk to a stable where a few horses were kept.

Then one afternoon, Brutus had seen dust at the end of the path that led to the house and, before very long, Antony had rode into the courtyard, followed by two of his men on their own horses.

He wore richly embroidered clothes under the dust from travel, and the metal decorations on his horse’s bridle gleamed in the light of the low sun. Brutus didn’t know where his own clothes came from, but they were made of plain, unadorned fabric. His hair had grown messy, because nobody had offered to cut it, and he did not have the tools. And there was his face.

He tried not to dwell on it, for there was nothing shameful about a wound received in battle. And yet he couldn't help but think sometimes about the wax masks which hung in the most hallowed room in his mother's house. Smooth and terrible visages which kept his glorious ancestors' memory alive for the future generations. He knew in his bones his image would never hang there now. Other times, he thought about the faces of the soldiers he had talked and laughed with during their long walk through Greece. Many of them had been veterans, and he had thought them all very ugly.

Antony’s horse nearly reared when he pulled on the reins, settling only after a few dancing steps with an irritated shake of the head. To be so full of energy after several days of riding, it must have been an exceptional animal. An expensive purchase, or a gift. Recent, in any case. Antony didn’t seem used to its moods yet. He slipped off its back, leaving one of the servants to take care of it.

“You look well”, Brutus said. He wasn’t quite sure whether he meant it to be defiant or bitter, or nothing at all.

Antony looked him up and down with a leer. “I would tell you what you look like, but you wouldn’t like it.” Then some of the mocking lilt in his voice went away. “Your mother is dead, by the way.”

“Oh.” Cassius and so many of his friends were dead, their armies routed, the Republic lost… there was so much to grieve for, that one more loss shouldn’t make much of a difference. And yet, his mother was gone and he felt like a tree torn off at the root. “How?”

“In a very dramatic fashion, I can assure you. Suicide. And putting half a dozen curses on the Julii.” Despite the glibness of his tone, Antony rubbed his pointer finger and thumb together. He frowned suddenly. “You’re not going to pass out, are you? You don’t look very solid.”

Brutus’ teeth were clenching on a howl.

“Alright, let’s get you inside.”

Brutus did stumble in the end, but not for long, somewhere between his bedroom’s door and the bed, so that Antony only had to drag him a few steps to place him on it with a grip around his collar and the other at his waist. He sat on the bed until the black moths on the edge of his vision went away. He could see Antony's sandalled feet pacing.

“This used to be my bedroom, you know. I couldn’t see the tree from the window back then. Well, maybe I was smaller…”

Brutus looked at him twisting his head this way and that, maybe to try to find the view from his childhood again.

“…Why am I here?” he asked abruptly.

Antony turned back towards him with a raised eyebrow, hands on his hips. He was still the handsomest man Brutus has ever seen, and he hated himself for being so quick to notice it even now.

He clicked his tongue.

“Not happy to be alive? What an ingrate.”

Brutus shook his head. He clenched his hands together to avoid grasping at his hair in frustration.

“I could be in a cell! Or… or paraded in front of the Senate as a peace offering or for a show of clemency, if there was still something like senatorial opposition to placate, or handed over to the Julii if you wanted to bolster your alliance…! I’m worthless as a hostage. There’s no one left for me to be held hostage against. What use am I, secreted away like this?”

Antony scratched the back of his head.

“Do you think I’m a good politician?”

Brutus looked at him, speechless. But Antony wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“I happen to think I’m pretty good at the game. It’s like warfare, but more polite. Well. The words are more polite. But the basic principles are the same. Never give something when you could trade, never trade when you could take. That’s how I ousted your little group from Rome. The enemy of my enemy is an ally. That’s what you should have expected at Philippi. And first come, first served. That one’s the essence of winning any battle.”

Antony stepped closer, hands lax at his sides, and Brutus had to raise his head to still be able to meet his gaze. If he had been standing up, they would have been nose to nose.

“I spent two weeks watching over a half-dead piece of meat. I told Octavian I’d catch up with him before he reached Rome, but I didn’t care how long it’d take, before you were dead or out of the woods. Well, the fox managed to force-march ten legions and had himself an ovation. Now everybody’s calling him the new Caesar and his sister is betrothed to Lepidus. It’s all slipping through my fingers and I still don’t care. You understand what I’m getting at?”

Brutus shook his head. Antony snorted.

“Maybe I should tell you what I thought you looked like when I saw you in the courtyard, after all. With your too-long hair, and the way you wear your farmer’s clothes like you’re strolling the streets of the Palatine Hill, and that marked face of yours. You looked like a man who’s decided hard work’s not for him, looking for a rich client to pamper him. I’d have bought you in a heartbeat.”

Brutus very consciously didn’t raise a hand to his face, either to feel the scar or to cover his suddenly-flaming cheeks.

“You’re-“ He choked on his words. “You’re insane.”

Antony threw his head back for a manic laugh. “Maybe! I’ve been in love with you ever since the first time I saw you.”

“Nobody’s ever loved _me!_ ”

But Antony kept going, each word deliberately, carefully enunciated.

“I’ve loved you ever since I was a child and I met you in Caesar’s house, and you don’t even remember. But I still do.”

With a cry, Brutus was on his feet. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do. His fists were raised. Did he intend to hit Antony? Gag him with his palms lest he kept talking? Antony was quicker. He had his fingers hooked around Brutus’ jaw, pressing them face against face, mouth against mouth. He could feel his breath, heavy and fast, against his skin. Brutus’s own hands stayed suspended in the air for an instant, then, conquered, came down slowly to clasp over Antony’s nape.

They fell back on the couch, Antony rolling beneath. Still breathing into each other, they rocked their hips together. At some point, Antony’s hands left Brutus’ face to grab his thighs, moving them so he was straddling him, moving to the rhythm of his powerful thrusts upwards. Brutus’s clenched the flesh of Antony’s shoulders so hard his fingertips left white indents when he shifted his grip. Their faces were so close that Brutus could not quite accommodate. Antony was flushed, grimacing, lost in the pursuit of pleasure.

“Look at me”, Brutus commanded between two jolting motions. Antony opened his eyes, slightly crossed so he could focus on him. There was no disgust, no mockery there. Brutus closed his own eyes at last, pressed his brow against Antony’s, clenched with a shuddering breath, then let himself go lax. Under him, he could feel Antony’s hips stutter, press up, and added wetness spread between their stomachs.

They stayed in the position long enough for their breathing to slow, then Brutus cautiously moved off of Antony. He felt like something had broken loose inside and if he moved too fast he would hear it rattle. He raised his mutilated right hand and laid it softly at the crown of Antony's head. His hair was stiff with dust and sweat, except at the place where it grew in a whorl and had stayed silky soft.

He’d never have done that while Antony was awake before. Even now, the other was obviously fighting sleep, lids falling more with each slow breath then opening wide with a surprised blink.

“What would you think about a trip to Egypt?” he asked, voice slightly slurred at first. “Octavian’s trying to deal me out of Rome, but I don’t think he realises how comfortable life can be south of the Mediterranean.”

“I’ve never been to Egypt.” He had never had the opportunity to.

That seemed to make Antony more alert.

“Really?” He craned his neck to catch his eyes. “Well, you won’t like it. They have decadent mores, those Egyptians, you’ll see.”

Brutus frowned. “You’re an expert, it seems.”

“I’ve only dabbled, but it was in my troubled youth. No, don’t frown.” He raised his hand over his shoulder awkwardly to press the back of two fingers on Brutus’ brow, as if to smooth them back in place. Brutus couldn’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t have been half as much of a wild child if I’d had you to glower at me. I’ll be a perfect example of Roman gravitas, I promise.”

“Don’t they build palaces for their dead?”

“They do! As splendid as they are hidden.”

“Well, I’ll be content with a nice house.”

“I’ll have one built just big enough for the two of us. _Sarkophágos philos, sarkophágos aristos_.”

Brutus camouflaged an involuntary laugh as a cough and bent down to stop further witticism with his lips. From Antony’s pleased smirk, he wasn’t fooled.

Two weeks later, they left the farmhouse. They took very little with them. There wasn’t much one could take on a horse in terms of luggage.

Antony had left detailed instructions behind for his things, which were to be sent to him to a port south of Rome. From there, he would sail by boat along the Mediterranean coast to Alexandria. But when his personal effects, chests of clothes and precious oils, favoured furniture and a few other trinkets reached the city of Misenum, nobody was here to receive them.

Letters were sent back to Rome, with the effect of a kick to an anthill. People arrived at the Antonii’s domain and interrogated the household. People were sent to Misenum and inquiries were even made as far as Alexandria. Findings indicated that although Antony had been seen in the Italian city, throwing a few resoundingly successful parties, nobody had heard word of him reaching Egypt. Nobody was even able to swear seeing him embark.

A report sent back to the highest instances in Rome concluded respectfully that it was entirely possible that the Triumvir had sunk without trace in the Mediterranean sea. Of a travelling companion no mention was made. From the descriptions of the Antonii servants, he might have been a former soldier or even a cheap paramour, an unimportant character in any case.

After some time, those conclusions were accepted and presented as political fact.

The country house was inherited by a distant nephew who left it to be managed as it had been before. Mark Antony’s home in Rome came back to Pompey’s remaining family. For lack of anything other to do with them, the chests with Antony’s last belongings were shared among the household. Clothes and perfumes went quickly. Only one stone bust stayed unclaimed.

It was well-made, the marble of good quality, but it had been damaged; and, with the offset look of its ageless features nobody knew who it represented besides.

*

Servilia fell in love when she was still quite young and she knew at once she would never love anyone else. He was a boy around her age, from a prestigious family, and he loved her as well. She could tell, from the way he looked back.

Unfortunately, young as she was, she was already a wife.

Servilia was a well-bred young girl, and so they took care not to be too obvious when they looked, and when the boy touched her hand one day under the shade of a fir tree and told her he loved her, she only let herself lie with him because her bleeding hadn’t come for two months and there would be no doubt about the filiation of her progeny.

She was very surprised when, as her belly had become visibly rounder, the boy kissed it and offered to take her into his house. Her mother had told her boys stayed childish longer than girls, but she was still slightly embarrassed to have to explain why that would not happen.

The boy married soon after.

Then there was a war, her son was born, her husband died and, because of his name, the boy was sent away from Rome.

They traded letters, which Servilia would address to “my dear Gaius” as she would a husband. It was an epistolary habit she would never lose.

When Gaius came back, he was a widower. He started visiting Servilia as one would visit the widow of an old ally and friend. Her son would run to him when he heard his voice and they would play together with small wooden horses on the cool stones of the atrium.

He started thinking of marriage again. He thought his daughter would like little Marcus and that Servilia would like Julia. He even thought Marcus would bear the name of Caesar well when the time came.

On something close to a whim, he had a bust made. Marcus’s face was still soft with youth, the clay-like quality of childhood reflected in flesh, but the timelessness of marble gave a rigidity to his features which would in truth only start to come with adolescence. The stone showed a child’s face but also the first broad strokes of the man he would grow into.

As Gaius looked at it, he recognised very little that could have come from the boy’s father. And it wasn’t that Marcus took after his mother either, except maybe for something in the shape of the eyes.

Doubt burrowed in him like worm in a fruit. He had always believed that Marcus was a Junius, simply because Servilia had said so. When it came to those matters, barring obvious signs such as unusual hair or eye colour, only the woman could really know. So the question which came to him next, suppuration from a childhood wound which had never completely healed after all, was, what could lead a woman to say the child was one man’s and not another’s?

He was a prideful man. He had loved Servilia since the very first time their eyes had met. And he had always believed she loved him as well, and as much. The suspicion that she could have chosen another father for her child was a blow both to his pride and his love.

The bust stayed in his home and gathered dust for many long years.

**Author's Note:**

> * "Sarkophágos philos, sarkophágos aristos": pun on "oikos philos, oikos aristos" (home beloved, home best), the equivalent of the American “home sweet home” according to reddit.com. I don’t know Greek at all, but I eyeballed that “oikos” ends like “sarkophágos”, so, potentially grammatically correct?  
> ** I am screaming, because there’s NEW BRUTUS/MARK-ANTONY ART on tumblr https://marcvs-antonivs.tumblr.com/post/614146064915775488/i-honestly-think-at-this-point-ive-re-imagined. And it's... very super good.  
> *** Thank you for reading this whole thing, it was fun to write. Special Thanks to Caepio, who went out of their way to comment on every chapter, which was a tremendous boost ! Special thanks as well to the anon who sent me a nice message on tumblr when I was in a rut ^^


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